Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Description (book annotation): What happens when a psychic tells Lucy that she'll be getting married within the year? Her roommates panic! What is going to happen to their blissful existence of eating take-out, drinking too much wine, bringing men home, and never vacuuming?

Lucy reassures her friends that she's far too busy arguing with her mother and taking care of her irresponsible father to get married. And then there's the small matter of not even having a boyfriend.

But then Lucy meets gorgeous, unreliable Gus. Could he be the future Mr. Lucy Sullivan? Or could it be handsome Chuck? Or Daniel, the world's biggest flirt? Or even cute Jed, the new guy at work?

Maybe her friends have something to worry about after all...

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

One critic said of this book, "Thoroughly enchanting...Keyes crafts virtually every sentence of this very charming novel into an art form of high hilarity."

That critic... lied. I like Marian Keyes' books; Sushi For Beginners is my favorite (although that could simply be due to the fact that one of the main characters has my name, and my name is pretty rare outside of Ireland). But this book wasn't one of her best.

Her characters were all cliched. The fat friend was eccentric and weird and obsessed with her weight. The Australian was outdoorsy and adventurous. The blonde roomie was a dumb bimbo. The Scottish roomie was money-hungry and controlling with a nasty temper. The Irishmen were all alcoholics. And her gay friend... well, just take every stereotype you've ever heard concerning homosexual men, throw them all together, and there's her token gay character. The main love interest, Daniel, was also cliched... Bad boy sowing his wild oats finally realizes he doesn't want to party anymore because he's actually in love with the girl he's been friends with but never sexually attracted to all these years (it's funny, but I could have sworn I saw a movie about that recently.... something with Patrick Dempsey...hmmm...). Luckily, Daniel was kept from being too stereotyped, because instead of going to his friend and confessing his passionate love for her, he goes out with her roommate. I also was slightly more forgiving of Keyes' unoriginal male lead because the only good dialogue in the book happened between Lucy and Daniel.

I just could not sympathize with Lucy. She whined and complained... a lot. Non-stop. Beginning, middle, and end. Her character was selfish, shallow, and stupid. Very stupid. I felt no pity for her when her boyfriend broke up with her a second time. She was stupid to take him back after he abandoned her (literally) the first time. And perhaps.... perhaps... I could have liked her better if she had resolved her issues sooner. Instead, she wallowed in self-pity and guilt. Why are Marian Keyes female leads always chronically depressed?

A huge chunk of the dialogue throughout the book irritated me. Many of the conversations took place when the characters were drunk or high (which was most of the time- also irritating), and I'm guessing that Keyes thought she'd made their dialogue interesting and funny. It was just annoying, and I kept mentally picturing myself throwing a bucket of ice water on top of all of them to make them shut up and sober up. Pages and pages of nonsense and slurring speech gets old... fast.

You could have seen the ending coming from a hundred miles away. I pretty much figured out exactly what was going to happen by the first couple of chapters. The rest of the book was just filler between points A and B.

Considering all of this, the book probably deserves a lower grade than a C. But the dialogue between Daniel and Lucy held my interest, to the point that I just wanted to flip to the scenes of them talking to each other and read nothing else. Their interactions were great to read, and I just loved Daniel, despite his stereotypical persona. Thanks to him, the book gets a boost up the grading scale. C